Open-pit mining radically changes Butte

Editor's note: In 2014, Montana celebrates 150 years as a territory and 125 years as a state. We're marking both landmark birthdays each Sunday with a Montana Moment, a chronological look at key events in Montana's history.

The moment: Open-pit mining begins in Butte, 1955.

The story: "From East Butte to Meaderville to McQueen, they are part of the Pit now. Other people get displaced by renewal projects or whatever, but at least they can go back to the physical place. They can say, 'This used to be my home.' Even if it's a different building, they can still stand on the spot. But not Butte. It's eaten up. The ground isn't there anymore. It's hard to orient yourself to where things used to be. Those moves were hard on people." — Former resident of East Butte, quoted in Janet L. Finn's "Tracing the Veins"

In 1955, the Anaconda Co. — Montana's single largest employer — started digging the Berkeley Pit.

The city prepared for an expected 2,500 more mining jobs — and the families those miners would bring with them. The miners' union signed a three-year contract with the company, which invested in new homes, a hospital, an auditorium and a club.

In 1959 as the Butte Miners' Union negotiated its next three-year contract, the Anaconda Co. began producing copper from the El Salvador Mine in Chile. "The Richest Hill on Earth," where the company had earned $2.5 billion in 70 years, suddenly was insignificant compared to the company's South American holdings.

In Butte, labor negotiations ground to a halt and a strike began, with the grim harbinger of an earthquake centered in Yellowstone but damaging Butte buildings. The strike lasted six months.

"Some described it as the strike that broke the backs of Butte's unions," Finn wrote. "Rumors spread that the Anaconda Co. planned to close the Butte operations completely due to high operating costs. Some miners left town in search of work elsewhere."

Church bells rang when the strike ended — after $17 million of payroll was lost during the strike — and miners went back to work for less pay than before the strike. The Anaconda Co. announced 700 miners would lose their jobs as mines closed.

"Open-pit mining, along with modest underground mining operations, continued in Butte through the 1970s, but as the Berkeley Pit operation expanded, the mine consumed several of the close-knit ethnic neighborhoods that had come to define the city," Finn wrote. "While mining operations in Butte continued into the 21st century on ever more modest scales, children who came of age in the 1950s were the last generation for whom mining defined reality as it had powerfully done for tens of thousands of children for over half a century."

Butte lost population and power. Great Falls was the state's largest city in the 1950s. Montanans earned about 8 percent more than the national average through the decade, but by 1968, income was 14 percent less than the national average, according to "Montana: Stories of the Land" by Krys Holmes.

Live the moment: Visit the Berkeley Pit viewing stand from March to November at the end of Park Street in uptown Butte. Admission is $2.

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Inbody at 791-1490 or by email at kinbody@greatfallstribune.com.